Schools try to minimize cases of colds, flu

At Poinsettia Elementary School in Carlsbad, second-grade teacher Tricia Rowe has a bottle of hand sanitizer on a cart outside her classroom door where students hang up their jackets. She encourages her students to use the bottle on the way in and on the way out, and she stocks her classroom with plenty of tissue. Rowe encourages her students to drink a lot of water during the day as a preventive measure.

Rowe, a 25-year veteran, said encouraging hygiene is an ongoing effort. She teaches her students to think about their classroom as a family, and to be “conscientious and responsible for your friends and class.” Sick children are an inevitability, however.

“Right now we have a lot of kids with runny noses and a lot of coughing going on,” Rowe said last week.

Outside of measures a school can take, effective home care is vital, school nurses say.

Many school nurses help families with many tasks, including choosing the right over-the-counter medicines and navigating health insurance issues, Jaworski said.

Parents should follow a few simple rules for home health care, the National Association of School Nurses advises.

Children should stay home if they have a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, have been vomiting or have other symptoms that would prevent them from participating in school.

Such symptoms could include excessive fatigue and lack of appetite, productive coughing and sneezing, headache, body aches and/or earaches, and a sore throat. A severe sore throat could be strep throat even if there is no fever.

Children should stay home until the fever has been gone for 24 hours without medication.